Summerzone 2021

The Summerzone’ is an innovative project for children aged 5-18 that we have run for 19 years and is one of our most popular annual events. Designed to run during the school holidays, it would be ideal for children from families with low incomes from Halliwell and surrounding areas.

Our Summerzone has been really popular this year. We have three more volunteers and every young person is receiving a packed lunch. Fun and games start as soon as the children walk in, and keep going until home time. Many parents ask “how on earth do we cope?” But here at Harmony we have over 20 years experience with young people and we love what we do!

Harmony, as many other charities and business’s in the UK almost closed our doors due to the Government lockdowns, in fact, we had two lockdowns here in Bolton, so we are proud that we managed to ride through this bad time and survive to serve our community after 20 years and we hope to keep serving for the next 20 years.

Summerzone is a fun and exciting time for children to mix with others, be part of groups working together and learn new skills, we have noticed this year more participants from minority sectors which is great to see, and although it means more work, we are always happy to supply vegetarian meals to suit any religious requirements.

When you see these children together, it shows what a great community we have and the diversity of all as one main unit.

Colorful Umbrella and Floaters Summer Poster

WW1 Exhibition open day

We had a fantastic open day with a great turn out, singing, dancing and talks from The Royal Artillery Association, along with our WW1 soldier selfie, film reels and a WW1 audio experience with sounds from the front line, everyone seemed to have a good time with free brews and pasties (big shout out to Hunters the Bakers in Bolton).

People were particularly interested in our photographs and info on local life in Bolton during WW1 which was researched specifically. Rachel Crowe was singing tunes from the era, which the children really enjoyed. The exhibition is open until the 30th November.

St James WW1 trip

We had a fantastic field trip with the fabulous staff and children from St James primary school Daisy Hill, the school are incorporated in our WW1 project, we visited 6 locations where war memorials were photographed, crayon rubbings taken and lots of artwork. All the children are very well educated on the subject of WW1 and have been a real asset to our project which lasted for 8 weeks visiting the school and having sessions including video and art. The children will be performing a special dance routine at our WW1 exhibition open day.

This trip was very generously funded by the ‘Heritage Lottery Fund’ to which we are extremely grateful.

St Ethelberts primary school

We are currently working with St Ethelberts Bolton with an exciting new project, the children from year 5 and 6 are producing a short film about relationships and online dangers, it’s early stages, and the project will run past Christmas. The children are already excited, but there’s a lot of work ahead, brainstorming the story, writing the script, storyboarding the scenes, who’s doing what, when and how, wow, lot’s of decisions for the group to work together with. Watch this space!